Three
July 1994
Something had changed since Sterback, Saben thought through a haze of drugs.
Her voice was husky from death growls, she regretted not learning how to breath. Throat cancer, polyps, staples and sarcomata loomed. Though she didn't want to live forever.
They were driving, had been for hours. The tour was over and there was no big bang, no celebration, just the instinct to flee the scene and the lingering feeling of trepidation. Things hadn't been right since Sterback.
Saben's hand was bandaged tight and itched like bitch.
"Stop that." Heather said imperiously.
When Heather had offered her pills earlier that night to help her sleep, she had devoured three (or four?) just for a moment of peace from her vivid dreams and burning throat.
Saben curled into a ball, turning her back on Heather's cold eyes. Thinking. She had never told anybody where she came from. Life After Baba Lucine, it's such a bluesy name for a heavy metal band, they would say but it was important that they use the name for now, not forever. Not forever.
Corpulent Baba Lucine. The child snatcher. The pimp. Saben shivered as she half slept. That night was both vivid and distorted since she had seen the stranger in the crowd, he was like a phantom descending from a dream. Maybe. Maybe it was all a nightmare.
Why hadn't he changed? There were no wrinkles on his face, no lines telling a story of age or experience. Just his eyes. Eyes that held some of the vast mysteries of the universe or at least the answers to all questions she could possibly conceive to ask. Maybe she was just crazy: delirious from lack of sleep.
Heather's magic pills was slowly stealing away her rational mind, they were making her empty and invincible.
"You live in too many fantasies." Heather mumbled.
Better than living in reality.
Saben had never been to school. But she did read, though she had barely been taught to read and write before she ran away. She was ravenous for literature and this fuelled her lyrics. You wouldn't think it to look at her, gutter punk slime trying to be tough, trying to survive.
Deckard had seen her first, already fucking her with his eyes as he lured her to his apartment after a rock show.
She was seduced by the offer of food and shelter and he didn't seem so bad compared to other things. He had played his acoustic guitar, singing softly off-key and she had joined in. She was singing to some half-remembered classic rock ballads she had first heard on Danny Somtow old bootleg cassettes.
The instinct came to her, to start screaming her words, inexplicable reams of poetry flowed from her. It was a gift she hadn't asked for but she was compelled to do it, exorcising demons with her throat, seeking vengeance through her words.
Deckard took her to a practise space, a loft in the warehouse district where there were good acoustics. Deckard had thrust a mic in her hand and told her to sing and she sang and she screamed and she had met Heather for the first time. What about the other chick? Heather asked Deckard who shrugged eloquently.
Saben had known Pin Cushion from a ninth street shelter where she had stayed with a bunch of burnouts in NY. He had jammed with her a few times but his kit was held ransom at his ex-girlfriends place so he agreed to join Life After Baba Lucine if they'd pitch in for a new kit.
It had been the beginning of something with potential, it became poignantly clear when she spent her first few nights with Deckard that to make the band work she needed to detach herself from them all.
Though she loved them in secret spasms, she was never scared of them and rarely suspicious. She didn't have to fuck them. Just stand in front of them and their sparkling instruments put her lips to the mic and scream. There were no mysteries. No teeth. No electric blue cruelty.
She was almost fully asleep when the van pulled into the gas station.
They had been aiming for the desert for the past few days. Pin had a brother in Nevada who he said could put them up for a spell.
Saben woke up sluggishly, not able to shake the drug haze that now clung to the edges of her vision as well as her mind. She lifted her face to the puffy-eyed exhausted expressions of her makeshift family and felt sad.
Something had changed since Sterback. The last gig had robbed them of something and they all felt it even if not one of them could articulate.
"No more cash." Pin said and tapped the dashboard where the dial had flicked to 'empty'.
They all turned to Geoff who shook his head, no. He didn't have anything to spare.
Saben sighed and she and Heather crawled out of the van to stretch their limbs and survey the gas station. There was an out of service car wash attached to the side, the lights on the outside were dim, some bulbs broken or fractured and flickering.
She could see the silhouette of the clerk behind his counter, head bent over something on the desk. From this distant he looked young, not yet thirty, with skin the colour of cappuccino.
"I did it the last time." Heather said.
Saben cringed and she could feel her heartbeat through her wound.
*
His name was Kenny and he knew exactly what he wanted the instant he saw Saben enter the store. She didn't have to lean over the counter, offer her cleavage like human sacrifice upon his alter he was already hooked.
Underage arse was a thing of beauty and Kenny was the kind of guy that had a thing for little white and Latin chicks. She took a lollipop from the counter and stuck it in her cheek. His eyes flicked from her lips to her tits and then to her tongue.
"So how about you do me a favour and you look the other way?"
"Ain't no other way to look, sweetheart." Shaking his head, no.
She saw the place where his wedding band scarred his now swollen brown finger, he had hurried removed it when she came in. The gas station was deserted except for Kenny who dutifully watched over the rotting stock.
The rest of the band stayed in or around the van, Geoff was staring at Saben. If looks could kill…
Kenny lead her silently to the store room as he realised she's silently consented to do whatever he had on his mind and she had a feeling he had a lot on his mind. He didn't bother putting the "closed" sign in the window.
He was plain about what he wanted saying the wife didn't do it anymore not since the second of his three children came into the picture. He showed her a picture of his family. Dumb bitch, she thought to the two dimensional smiling wife. 'Til death do us part…his zipper was loud as it came undone.
"C'mon." He said impatiently, half in disbelief, this shit didn't just happen to Kenny. Saben was scoping for cameras hidden in corners before she sunk to her knees and spat out the sickly sweet cherry lollipop.
She reached for his open zipper, her fingertips were grazed on their way past the metal teeth. Kenny groaned and lurched forward, falling like a ton of bricks.
Geoff stood over him with a baseball bat the word 'peacemaker' crudely scrawled on the side. She remembered when he had stolen it from a bar in Boston. There was bright blood on the wood. It reminded her of the stranger's ruby lips, his wild blue eyes with the heavens rolling through them.
"Jesus, Sabe." Geoff is panting as he dropped the tip of the bat to the ground to use as a crutch. Is this all you are? Is this all you want to be? A terrible feeling of sadness and shame, started in a slow burn of tears behind her cheeks.
Saben got to her feet staring at Kenny's prone figure, a pile at her feet. Se felt light headed probably from Heather's drugs. "You okay?" Geoff asked belatedly.
She nodded.
"That was close."
She grunted in agreement. She felt vaguely sorry for Kenny, now that he was unconscious, he was defenceless, an easy target for anyone or anything.
"Let's go." Geoff pulled her back to the van where Pin was jumping back in the driver's seat, his teeth gritted obviously unhappy with what had just happened inside. He was too soft hearted and different from the others because of it.
Saben resumed her place, curled up between Heather feet and Deckard's soft guitar case. She made a pillow of it as the van thrummed to life beneath her, lulling her into a new dreamless sleep.